Last night I finally watched episode #1 of Nicholas Winding Refn‘s Too Old To Die Young (Amazon, 6.14). I have nine more episodes to go, but I’ll tell you right now I’m not much of a fan.

I “respect” the noirish-arthouse atmosphere (solemn, menacing, gates-of-hell atmosphere) and the slow, snail-like pacing. By which I mean that I’m okay with Refn’s decision to shoot it this way as, you know, a stylistic “look at me” signature thing. But I didn’t find it involving. Like, at all. It’s basically about ugliness, evil, malevolence, posing, slowness, dark lighting, irony, set design, death, perversity.

“This is not human behavior as I know it,” I kept saying to myself. “This isn’t even noir behavior. In the first scene it takes…what, 15 minutes for a cop to hassle and interrogate a young woman that he’s pulled over and apparently wants to take advantage of in some fiendish way? Less? Feels like 15. They talk and talk and talk and talk…what is this?”

If human history progressed at this pace we’d still be back in the heyday of the Roman Empire. I’d be wearing a toga and sandals and writing for the Foro Romano Gazette. Everyone takes too damn long to speak or do anything, for that matter. I asked myself again, “Why the fuck am I watching this?”

To be honest, I watched TOTDY because I’d heard it was a problematic slog and I wanted to see Miles Teller struggle. I’ve had it in for this fucking guy ever since that 2014 Hollywood-Highland escalator episode (“Don’t be a pervert, man”).

“This is not going to add to my understanding of or appreciation for the wonder of God’s universe,” I went on. “This isn’t going to turn me on or make me laugh and drop to my knees like I’m watching the second coming of Michelangelo Antonioni. It’s just going to irritate me so you know what? Fuck this series. Okay, I’ll probably watch a few more episodes.”

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June 18, 2019 12:38 pmby Jeffrey Wells

Paul Walter Hauser will play Richard Jewell, the overweight security guard who was falsely and widely accused by news media types of having planted a bomb during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, in Clint Eastwood‘s The Ballad of Richard Jewell.

My first thought when I read this was “I know that the Jonah Hill + Leonardo DiCaprio version of this project went south a couple of years ago, but what happened exactly?”

I’m frankly not delighted about Hauser playing Jewell, mainly because he’s played so many low-rent scumbags that he’s convinced me that he might not be acting on a certain level. Hill would’ve been a slamdunk, but I’m not sure I can get engage with Hauser, root for him, identify with his plight.

Hauser, 32, alluded to this perception last year during a BlacKkKlansman red-carpet interview:

“Unfortunately because of how I look, a chubby, slightly awkward white dude, [I’ve gotten] cast as a lot of scummy dudes lately, and I play a real scummy dude in BlacKkKlansman. [Also] I Tonya…anytime I’m on a sitcom I play a doofus or an ayehole, but you know, those [roles] are fun to play, somebody’s got to do it, I’ll do ’em.”

The conservative-minded Eastwood is doing The Ballad of Richard Jewell, of course, because of the anti-news media narrative.

In Jewel’s case the narrative (which unfolded over 88 days from late July to late October of ’96) was earned and then some. Several reporters and commentators (including the Atlanta Constitution‘s Kathy Scruggs and NBC’s Tom Brokaw) fingered Jewell as the likely Atlanta bomber without having all the facts.

Jewell’s tragedy nonetheless feeds into Trump’s fake news mythology, and Eastwood’s film, you bet, will almost certainly strike a chord in America’s heartland or, you know, with the same ticket-buyers who flocked to Clint’s American Sniper and chortled along with Grant Torino‘s Walt Kowalski.

Full disclosure: Hollywood Elsewhere loved Gran Torino from the get-go. I also liked the geriatric drug-smuggling thing, The Mule. I wasn’t much of a fan of American Sniper, in part because Bradley Cooper looked too fat and also because of that fake animatronic baby scene.

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June 18, 2019 11:18 amby Jeffrey Wells

Three and a half years ago I had the honor of briefly speaking with Ryuichi Sakamoto at a Golden Globes after-party. At that point I’d been playing his Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence theme in my head for 30 years, but I was especially knocked over by his Revenant score. He was dealing with a health threat at the time; I gather he’s doing better now.

June 17, 2019 6:31 pmby Jeffrey Wells

Criterion is preparing a 2k digital restoration Bluray of Bill Forsyth‘s Local Hero. As the disc will pop on 9.24.19 and it’s mid-June now, I’m guessing there’s time to fix the sound mix on the last shot before the credits.

Play the below YouTube clip — the shot I’m speaking of begins at 1:59 and ends at 2:15. When we hear Ferness’s only pay phone ringing we know it’s Peter Reigert calling from Houston — a classic bittersweet moment. Actually one of the saddest, loneliest moments in cinema history.

But you can’t really hear the phone ringing all that clearly. You can “hear” it (I listened three times with headphones) but only barely, and Mark Knopfler‘s swirly-guitar-echo score is too loud. The Criterion guys have to turn down the Knopfler and bring up the sound of the telephone a notch or two — make it pop just a little bit more.

Please don’t fuck this up, Criterion…please. The ending totally depends upon the audience being able to clearly hear that faint tinny jingle.

,
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June 17, 2019 5:59 pmby Jeffrey Wells

With the 80-year-old Gone With The Wind more or less culturally discredited for its unfortunate racial content and D.W. Griffith‘s The Birth of A Nation all but erased from common memory for its horrid depictions of the KKK amid other racial affronts, it’s not entirely surprising that the reputation of Lillian Gish, the star of Birth of a Nation as well as arguably the greatest actress of the silent era, is also being trashed by the forces of p.c. cleansing.

Roughly six weeks ago the trustees of Bowling Green State University decided to remove Gish’s name from its Gish Film Theater in the Student Union because of her Birth of a Nation association.

Film scholar, author and HE friendo Joseph McBride, co-writer of “An American Film Institute Salute to Lillian Gish” for CBS-TV in 1983 and ’84, has posted a suitably outraged essay about the Gish debunking.

MassLive’s Ray Kelly is reporting that “more than 50 prominent artists, writers, and film scholars are calling for the restoration of Gish’s name to the BGSU theater. Among those signers: Martin Scorsese, James Earl Jones, Helen Mirren, George Stevens Jr., McBride, Malcolm McDowell, Lauren Hutton, Larry Jackson and Joe Dante.”

McBride confesses to “mingled disbelief and outrage” after hearing that Gish has become “the latest victim of political correctness run amok.” Here’s the link.

“The Directors Guild of America in 1999 provoked a similar controversy by removing Griffith’s name from its career achievement award,” McBride reminds. “Director Robert Wise, one of the DGA board members at the time and a past president of the guild, provoked a further controversy when he told me in a subsequent interview that he thought the guild was wrong to dishonor Griffith and had overreacted to pressure. (Bowling Green cited that DGA precedent as one of its justifications for stripping Gish’s name from its theater.)

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June 17, 2019 4:41 pmby Jeffrey Wells

I’ve written a few times about the four different kinds of film scores — (a) old-school orchestral, strongly instructive (telling you what’s going on at almost every turn), (b) emotional but lullingly so, guiding and alerting and magically punctuating from time to time (like Franz Waxman‘s score for Sunset Boulevard), (c) watching the movie along with you, echoing your feelings and translating them into mood music (like Mychael Danna‘s score for Moneyball), and (d) so completely and harmoniously blended into the fabric of the film that you’ll have a hard time remembering a bridge or a bar after the film ends.

We all understand that the era of classic film scores — composed by Miklos Rosza, Bernard Herrman, Waxman, Max Steiner, Maurice Jarre, Alex North, Dimitri Tiomkin, Bronislau Kaper, Ennio Morricone, Leonard Rosenman, Nino Rota, Elmer Bernstein, Alfred Newman, Hugo Friedhofer and Jerry Goldsmith — is over and done with. Their work (i.e., the artful supplying of unmissable emotional undercurrents for mainstream, big-studio films that peaked between the mid 1930s and late ’70s) belongs to movie-score cultists now. It’s sad to contemplate how one day these awesome creations will be absent from playlists entirely.

But I’ve always enjoyed these movie symphonies the most because their composers — most of them classically trained and European-born — didn’t just write “scores” but created non-verbal, highly charged musical characters. They didn’t watch the film in the seat beside you or guide you along as most scores tend to do — they acted as a combination of a Greek musical chorus and a highly willful and assertive supporting character.

These “characters” had as much to say about the story and underlying themes as the director, producers, writers or actors. And sometimes more so. They didn’t musically fortify or underline the action — they were the action.

If the composers of these scores were allowed to share their true feelings they would confide the following before the film begins: “Not to take anything away from what the director, writers and actors are conveying but I, the composer, have my own passionate convictions about what this film is about, and you might want to give my input as much weight and consideration as anyone else’s. In fact, fuck those guys…half the time they don’t know what they’re doing but I always know…I’m always in command, always waist-deep and carried away by the current.”

Eight and a half years ago I wrote the following about Rosza in a piece called “Hungarian Genius“: “Rosza sometimes let his costume-epic scores become slightly over-heated, but when orgiastic, big-screen, reach-for-the-heavens emotion was called for, no one did it better. He may have been first and foremost a craftsman, but Rosza really had soul.

“Listen to the overture and main title music of King of Kings, and all kinds of haunting associations and recollections about the life of Yeshua and his New Testament teachings (or at the least, grandiose Hollywood movies about same) start swirling around in your head. And then watch Nicholas Ray’s stiff, strangely constipated film (which Rosza described in his autobiography as ‘nonsensical Biblical ghoulash’) and it’s obvious that Rosza came closer to capturing the spiritual essence of Christ’s story better than anyone else on the team (Ray, screenwriter Phillip Yordan, producer Samuel Bronston).”

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June 17, 2019 2:58 pmby Jeffrey Wells

One of the complaints about Robert Wise‘s West Side Story (’61) was that here and there the Upper West Side slums of Manhattan looked too lush and pretty. Wise cleaned up the milieu, painting the tenement alleys bright red and de-rusting the fire escapes, and Daniel Fapp‘s cinematography, following Wise’s lead, made it seem as if much of the film was happening on a Hollywood back lot.

Director Steven Spielberg and dp Janusz Kaminski are clearly looking to lean the other way on their new version of West Side Story (Disney/Fox, 12.18.20). Or, if you will, Kaminski is delivering the same desaturated, vaguely milky colors that have become his trademark in a majority of the films he’s shot for Spielberg over the last quarter-century.

Kaminski did the same thing to the Washington Post newsroom in The Post — he grayed and grimmed it up, certainly compared to the newsroom captured by dp Gordon Willis in All The President’s Men.

Misheard HE lyric: “With a click, with a shock, phono jingo dorro knock…”

June 17, 2019 5:20 amby Jeffrey Wells

Ever respectful and always affectionate, Jett called to wish me Happy Father’s Day today. This was snapped sometime around late ’91 or early ’92. Jett was four; Dylan had just turned three. We’re looking at a video feed of ourselves.

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June 16, 2019 7:56 pmby Jeffrey Wells

After that somewhat disappointing Booksmart tally ($19.7 million after 24 days compared to $121 million domestic for Superbad) and Late Night‘s slow showing ($5.5 million after two weekends), the question is when will a woke + younger women movie break through and become the next The Devil Wears Prada ($124 million domestic)?

Maybe $25 million-plus grosses just aren’t in the cards for this kind of fare. Is it permissible to say that woke-minded scripts seem to be appealing to a fairly narrow slice of the viewing public? And that this slice tends to get narrower when you…forget it.

Diary of a Teenage Girl ($1,477,000), The Miseducation of Cameron Post ($904,703), Eighth Grade ($13,539,709), Thorougbreds ($3,072,605), The Edge of Seventeen ($14,431,633), etc.

The somewhat wokey Long Shot managed $30.2 million but that was aimed at the low-rent Seth Rogen faithful; Charlize Theron was an added ingredient.

June 16, 2019 7:48 pmby Jeffrey Wells

Donald Trump to chief of staff Mick Mulvaney: “My God, man…can you control yourself or what? I’m doing an interview with George Stephanopoulos and you cough? I’m talking about my taxes and you fucking cough? Are you a child? Coughing is a sign of nervousness and uncertainty — ask any Broadway producer. Next time you’re seized by an urge to cough while I’m doing an important interview, please leave the room. Only men are allowed in this room. If you’re going to behave like a 12 year-old with the sniffles, you have to leave.”

June 16, 2019 6:55 pmby Jeffrey Wells

The controversial highlight of the just-concluded Sydney Film Festival was the adverse reaction to Jennifer Kent‘s The Nightingale (IFC Films, 8.2) during a 6.9 screening at the Ritz Cinema.

Except I saw The Nightingale three or four days ago and didn’t think it was quite as horrific as Sydney festivalgoers did. Rough stuff, yes, but delivered with a kind of stylistic restraint.

Set in 1825 Tasmania, the film is a rough-round-the-edges revenge drama in which Clare (Aisling Franciosi), a young Irish convict, is determined to pursue a cruel British officer (Sam Claflin) and three underlings after they rape her and then murder her husband and baby. Clare hires Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), an Aboriginal tracker, to guide her through the island’s jungle-like wilderness on the trail of the killers. The audience complaints were about two scenes in which Clare is savagely raped, the second time in gang fashion. Her infant child is also killed in the latter scene.

Give all this negative build-up, I was surprised by how much I admired and respected The Nightingale, the awful cruelty and brutality notwithstanding. Kent is a very scrupulous and well-focused director, and she’s simply incapable of delivering over-the-top violence for its own sake. Start to finish The Nightingale feels well-honed and exacting. It depicts terrible things, but it’s not a wallow. It conveys a sense of justice and appropriate balance.

But there’s also a point in The Nightingale in which which everything changes and it all kind of falls apart — the story tension vanishes. It happens somewhere around the 75% or 80% mark when Clare loses her nerve in her quest for revenge. From that point on it doesn’t work. Because the film has delivered what William Goldman used to call a “drop-out” moment -— i.e., when something happens that just makes you collapse inside, that makes you surrender interest and faith in the ride that you’re on. You might stay in your seat and watch the film to the end, but you’ve essentially “left” the theatre. The movie had you and then lost you, and it’s not your fault.

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June 16, 2019 2:42 pmby Jeffrey Wells

When we think about the current climate of political terror (left-radical finger-pointing, shrieking condemnations on Twitter, threats of Danton-like beheadings and social shunnings), we tend to associate this with the politically correct intensity of the last two or three years, or since Donald Trump became President. But I was reminded this morning that the first stirrings began in the late aughts.

10 1/2 years ago and one month before the ’08 election of Barack Obama, I was severely beaten, gouged, kicked and bloodied by p.c. goon-squad types for mentioning a friend’s against-the-grain opinion about Jonathan Demme‘s Rachel Getting Married.

Demme’s film is not really about the marriage of the alabaster Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) and Sidney, a handsome Afrique-ebony guy (Tunde Adebimpe) as much as the travails of Rachel’s older sister Kim (Anne Hathaway), and especially her drug and alcohol problems and general inability to restrain her attention-whore tendencies during the wedding festivities.

The paragraph that landed me in hot water: “A friend has observed that the way Demme portrays the [film’s] African-American and Jamaican characters — Sidney, his Army-serving younger brother, his parents and the various musicians and guests who float in and out — reps a form of benevolent reverse racism. He does this, my friend argued, by making certain that only the white characters — Rachel and Kym and their parents, played by Debra Winger and Bill Irwin — are the screwed-up ones. Antsy, haunted, angry, nervous, gloomy. But the darker-skinned characters are all cool, kindly, radiant, gentle, serene.”

This is actually a dead-on observation, but the goon squad wasn’t having it. Here was my response:

“You guys sound like a typical personification of the morally and ethically superior media p.c. elite. Admonishing from a hanging-judge perspective or vantage point, but also speaking from an ivory tower.

“All I said is that Rachel Getting Married felt annoyingly fake — unnatural, restrictive — for two reasons in this context. One, only the white characters have any hangups or interesting character wrinkles of any kind, and two, the fact that nobody in the entire wedding ensemble over the weekend makes any kind of observational innocuous remark about the Sidney-Rachel dichotomy.

“Every good movie is a product of the mind and sensibilities of the director (or the director-writer) but if the auteurist card is overplayed a movie can end up feeling like the movie is taking place on another planet, or at least in another hemisphere.

“You’re telling me that in real life (and not in the rarified world of Demme Land) that nobody would say anything about Rachel-Sidney? Nothing? With the dialogue that we’ve all been hearing all across the country for the last year or so about the ‘elephant in the room’ in the current presidential election?

“With this country being a little more than 235 years old, and a once-significant (if extremely dated) Stanley Kramer social issues movie about the difficulty of accepting an interracial marriage on the part of the bride’s parents having been released only 40 years ago? You’re saying the country has become so transformed over the last 40 years that nobody invited to the Rachel-Sidney wedding would say anything at all? Nothing?

“During the LA Film Festival I asked a question of the director of Boogie Man, the doc about Lee Atwater. I said that I don’t believe that a strong>Willie Horton-type smear campaign would be as effective today as it was 20 years ago, and I was laughed at by some in the audience — they thought my statement was close to ridiculous.

“They didn’t think, in other words, that this country has moved a single inch from where it was values-wise in 1988. And you’re telling me there are no remnants whatsoever of the 1968 mentality, attitudes and social currents that resulted in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? You’re living on your own planet, gentlemen.”

June 16, 2019 12:51 pmby Jeffrey Wells

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Latest HE rundown of 2019 films of a certain preferred quality. 88 as we speak. Leaing off with the likeliest 2019 Best Picture contenders:

1. Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman (Netflix, sometime in October) — A mob hitman recalls his possible involvement with the slaying of Jimmy Hoffa. (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Jesse Plemons).

2. Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (Sony, 7.26) — A faded TV actor and his stunt double embark on an odyssey to make a name for themselves in the film industry during the Helter Skelter reign of terror in 1969 Los Angeles. (Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino).

3. Marielle Heller‘s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood — The story of Fred Rogers, the honored host and creator of the popular children’s television program, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. (Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Susan Kelechi Watson, Tammy Blanchard)

4. Greta Gerwig‘s Little Women (Sony, 12.25) — Four sisters come of age in America in the aftermath of the Civil War. (Florence Pugh, Timothée Chalamet, Emma Watson, Saoirse Ronan)

5. Jay Roach‘s Fair and Balanced (Lionsgate) — Fox honcho Roger Ailes and sexual harassment allegations that resulted in his resignation. (Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Allison Janney, Kate McKinnon, Malcolm McDowell, Mark Duplass)

6. Kasi Lemmons‘ Harriet (Focus Features) — A feminist 12 Years A Slave, based on the story of freedom fighter Harriet Tubman (Cynthia Erivo), her escape from slavery and subsequent missions to free dozens of slaves through the Underground Railroad in the face of growing pre-Civil War adversity. Cynthia Erivo, Janelle Monae, Joe Alwyn, Deborah Ayorinde, Clarke Peters, Leslie Odom Jr., Tory Kittles, Vondie Curtis-Hall.

7. Dee Rees‘ The Last Thing He Wanted (Netflix) — (boilerplate) A journalist stops her coverage of the 1984 U.S. Presidential election to care for her dying father / Anne Hathaway, Willem Dafoe, Ben Affleck, Toby Jones, Rosie Perez, Edi Gathegi, Mel Rodriguez, Brian Rechkemmer.

8. Steven Soderbergh‘s The Laundromat (Netflix) — Saga of journalists unearthing the Panama Papers scandal — a massive tax-evasion scheme involving 11.5 million files, secret banking accounts, powerful political figures. Melissa Rauch, Gary Oldman, Meryl Streep, Alex Pettyfer, David Schwimmer, James Cromwell, Matthias Schoenaerts, Antonio Banderas, Robert Patrick, Jeffrey Wright.

9. John Crowley‘s The Goldfinch (10.11, Warner Bros.) — Boilerplate: As a child, Theodore Decker survives a terrorist bombing at an art museum — an attack that kills his mother. From there, he tumbles through a series of adventures that finds him living in Las Vegas with his deadbeat father and, later, involved in art forgeries. / Ansel Elgort, Aneurin Barnard, Ashleigh Cummings, Willa Fitzgerald, Sarah Paulson, Luke Wilson, Jeffrey Wright, Nicole Kidman.

10. Gavin O’Connor‘s Torrance — Struggling with addiction, a former basketball star attempts becomes the coach of a disparate, ethnically mixed high school basketball team at his alma mater. (Ben Affleck, Janina Gavankar, Al Madrigal, Yeniffer Behrens) (Warner Bros.)

11. Roger Michell‘s Blackbird — A terminally ill mother arranges to bring her family together one last time before she dies. (Kate Winslet, Lindsay Duncan, Rainn Wilson, Susan Sarandon).

GENERAL APPEAL, BIGGER NAMES, BIGGER BUDGETS. etc. (30)

1. Ang Lee‘s Gemini Man — An over-the-hill hitman faces off against a younger clone of himself. (Will Smith, Clive Owen, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Benedict Wong).

2. Jon Favreau‘s The Lion King — CGI and live-action re-imagining of the 1994 Disney classic. (Voice-acting by Donald Glover, Alfre Woodard, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Seth Rogen).

3. Todd Phillips’ Joker — Joker origin story, you know the drill. (Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Shea Whigham, Zazie Beetz)

4. J.J. Abrams‘ Star Wars: Episode IX — The conclusion of the new ‘Star Wars’ trilogy. (Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Kelly Marie Tran, et.al.)

5. Joe Wright‘s The Woman in the Window — An agoraphobic woman living alone in New York begins spying on her new neighbors only to witness a disturbing act of violence. (Amy Adams, Wyatt Russell, Gary Oldman, Julianne Moore)

6. All You Need Is Love (aka “Untitled Danny Boyle/Richard Curtis Film”) — Set to the music of the Beatles, it’s about a musician who thinks he’s the only one who can hear the Beatles’ music. (Lily James, Ed Sheeran, Ana de Armas, Kate McKinnon, Lamorne Morris) Sheeran plays himself discovering a rising young musician. Mckinnon plays a talent agent. Hamesh Patel costars.

7. James Mangold‘s Ford v. Ferrari — The true story of the battle between Ford and Ferrari to win Le Mans in 1966. (Christian Bale, Matt Damon, Jon Bernthal).

8. Jordan Peele‘s Us — A “social thriller” set between two couples — one white, one black. Starring Winston Duke (Black Panther) and Lupita Nyongo’o — L.A. Daily News critic Bob Strauss champing at the very bit. (Anna Diop, Elisabeth Moss, Kara Hayward)

9. Gavin Hood‘s Official Secrets — The true story of a British whistleblower who leaked information to the press about an illegal NSA spy operation designed to push the UN Security Council into sanctioning the 2003 invasion of Iraq. (Matthew Goode, Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes)

10. David Michod‘s The King — (Timothée Chalamet, Joel Edgerton, Ben Mendelsohn, Robert Pattinson, Lily-Rose Depp) Adaptation of William Shakespeare‘s Henry IV, Parts I and II and Henry V. Chronicles the early 1400’s medieval struggle between England and France, both in succession as well as on the battlefield. Timothee Chalamet as Henry V rises to the English throne after beating the French in the Battle of Agincourt. (Froench king is played by Robert Pattinson.) Oscar bait. Brad Pitt produces. Netflix.

11. David Gordon Green‘s Newsflash — On November 22, 1963 CBS newsman Walter Cronkite grapples with reporting on live television about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Texas. Not starring Seth Rogen as Cronkite (and thank God!), but possibly costarring Mark Ruffalo, Logan Lerman.

12. John Lee Hancock‘s The Highwaymen — Based on the true story of how two retired Texas Rangers put together the posse that killed Bonnie and Clyde — not as depicted in the ’67 Arthur Penn film. Paul Newman and Robert Redford were originally set to play the two leads before Newman’s health failed. (Kevin Costner, Woody Harrelson, Kathy Bates, Kim Dickens)

13. Rupert Goold‘s Judy — Biopic of Judy Garland‘s battle with drug addiction and divorce in London in 1968, one year before her death. Liza Minnelli has come out publicly against the film and against Rene Zellweger playing her mother. (Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon, Jessie Buckley)

14. Deston Daniel Cretton‘s Just Mercy — Attorney Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) defends Walter McMillan (Jamie Foxx), a man unjustly imprisoned for murder. Based on Stephenson’s memoir. (Jordan, Foxx, Brie Larson, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Tim Blake Nelson, Rob Morgan)

15. Terrence Malick‘s Radegund — Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian conscientious objector, refuses to fight for the Third Reich in World War II and is executed in 1943. Shot in late summer of 2016. (August Diehl, Valerie Pachner, Michael Nyqvist, Jürgen Prochnow, Matthias Schoenaerts, Bruno Ganz)

16. Rian Johnson‘s Knives Out — A modern murder mystery in a classic whodunit style. (Jamie Lee Curtis, Ana de Armas, Michael Shannon, Chris Evans)

17. James Gray‘s Ad Astra — Astronaut Roy McBride travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his missing father and unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of our planet. (Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, Ruth Negga)

18. Bobby Moresco‘s Lamborghini — The life story of Ferruccio Lamborghini, the founder of Lamborghini. (Antonio Banderas, Alec Baldwin, Maria Grazia Cucinotta, Leonardo Salerni)

19. Dexter Fletcher‘s Rocketman — Elton John biopic, from his years as a prodigy at the Royal Academy of Music through his influential and enduring musical partnership with Bernie Taupin. (Richard Madden, Taron Egerton, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jamie Bell)

20. Dan Gilroy‘s Velvet Buzzsaw — American horror thriller film, written and directed by Gilroy. (Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Zawe Ashton, Natalia Dyer, Tom Sturridge, Daveed Diggs, Toni Collette, John Malkovich and Billy Magnussen) Set in LA’s contemporary art world, wealthy celebrity artists collide with billionaire collectors in an unusually twisted comedy horror thriller. (Netflix)

21. Tom Harper‘s The Aeronauts — Pilot Amelia Wren and scientist James Glaisher find themselves in an epic fight for survival while attempting to make discoveries in a hot air balloon. (Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Tim McInnerny)

PARTICULAR CONGREGATIONS / SMARTHOUSE / UPMARKET / INDIE SPIRITS GOTHAMS (58)

22. Sebastián Lelio‘s Gloria Bell — Remake of Lelio’s Chilean original. A middle-aged Los Angeles woman looking for love. (Julianne Moore, John Turturro, Alanna Ubach, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Sean Astin)

23. Steven Soderbergh‘s High Flying Bird — A sports agent pitches a rookie basketball client on an intriguing and controversial business opportunity during a lockout. (Zachary Quinto, Zazie Beetz, Kyle MacLachlan, Bill Duke)

24. Julie Taymor‘s The Glorias: A Life on the Road — Gloria Steinem‘s itinerant childhood and its influence upon her life as a writer, activist and organizer for women’s rights worldwide. (Alicia Vikander, Lulu Wilson, Julianne Moore, Bette Midler)

25. Craig Brewer‘s Dolemite Is My Name — The story of performer Rudy Ray Moore, who assumed the role of an iconic pimp named Dolemite during the 1970s. (Eddie Murphy, Wesley Snipes, Keegan-Michael Key, Craig Robinson)

26. Steven Soderbergh‘s The Laundromat — A group of journalists unearth the Panama Papers — 11.5 million files linking the world’s most powerful political figures to secret banking accounts to avoid taxes. (Gary Oldman, Melissa Rauch, Meryl Streep, Robert Patrick)

27. Kasi Lemmons‘ Harriet — The story of Harriet Tubman, who helped free hundreds of slaves from the South after escaping from slavery herself in 1849. (Janelle Monáe, Deborah Ayorinde, Cynthia Erivo, Joe Alwyn).

28. Noah Hawley‘s Pale Blue Dot — A female astronaut who, after returning to Earth from a life-changing mission in space, begins to slowly unravel and lose touch with reality. (Natalie Portman, Dan Stevens, Jon Hamm, Zazie Beetz)

29. Xavier Dolan‘s Matthias & Maxime — (Harris Dickinson, Dolan, Anne Dorval, Catherine Brunet)

39. Untitled Noah Baumbach Project — An unfolding divorce that spans from New York City to Los Angeles. (Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Ray Liotta, Laura Dern)

31. Joe Berlinger‘s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile — A chronicle of the crimes of Ted Bundy, from the perspective of his longtime girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer, who refused to believe the truth about him for years. (Zac Efron, Lily Collins, Haley Joel Osment, Kaya Scodelario)

32. Justin Kurzel‘s The True History of the Kelly Gang — The story of Australian bush-ranger Ned Kelly and his gang as they flee from authorities during the 1870s, based on Peter Carey’s novel. (Charlie Hunnam, Russell Crowe, Nicholas Hoult)

33. Rod Lurie‘s The Outpost — Abut the 2013 Battle of Kamdesh in which Taliban forces attacked a U.S. outpost. The result of the battle was a pyrrhic victory as most the the outpost was destroyed (8 Americans killed, 27 wounded) but Taliban forces retreated due to losses of over 150 Taliban fighter killed during the battle. Staff Sergeant Clinton Romesha (Scott Eastwood) and Staff Sergeant Ty Carter (Caleb Landry Jones) were both awarded the Medal of Honor in 2013 for courageous actions. Orlando Bloom also stars.

34. Darius Marder‘s Sound of Metal — (Olivia Cooke, Riz Ahmed, Mathieu Amalric, Arthur Hiou)

35. Fernando Meirelles‘ The Pope — Opposing visions between two of the most powerful leaders in the Catholic Church, both of whom must address their own pasts and the demands of the modern world in order to move the church forward. (Juan Minujín, Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Pryce, Matthew T. Reynolds)

36. Casey Affleck‘s Light of My Life — Father and daughter escape to the woods trying to outrun a deadly pandemic that has ravaged and destroyed the world. Also written by Affleck. (Casey Affleck, Elisabeth Moss, Tom Bower, Timothy Webber)

37. Robin Bissell‘s The Best of Enemies — Civil rights activist Ann Atwater faces off against C.P. Ellis, Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, in 1971 Durham, North Carolina over the issue of school integration. (Sam Rockwell, Tarahji O. Henson, Wes Bentley, Anne Heche)

38. Max Winkler‘s Jungleland — A reluctant bare-knuckle boxer and his manager must travel across the country for one last fight, but an unexpected travel companion exposes the cracks in their bond along the way. (Charlie Hunnam, Jessica Barden, Jack O’Connell, John Cullum)

39. Mia Hansen-Løve‘s Bergman Island — An American filmmaking couple who retreat to Faro for the summer to each write screenplays for their upcoming films in an act of pilgrimage to the place. (Mia Wasikowska, Vicky Krieps, Anders Danielsen Lie, Joel Spira.)

40. John Crowley‘s The Goldfinch — A boy in New York is taken in by a wealthy Upper East Side family after his mother is killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Nicole Kidman, Sarah Paulson, Finn Wolfhard, Ansel Elgort)

41. Adrian Noble‘s Mrs. Lowry and Son — (Vanessa Redgrave, Timothy Spall, Stephen Lord) L.S. Lowry becomes a widely celebrated 20th century UK painter for his dark brooding landscapes and emaciated stick figures, but spends most of his life under the influence of his autocratic mother and dies a reclusive virgin.

42. Jim Jarmusch‘s The Dead Don’t Die — Deadpan comic zombie film (Tilda Swinton, Adam Driver, Caleb Landry Jones, Chloë Sevigny, Bill Murray, Steve Buscemi — possibly Daniel Craig.

51. Casey Affleck‘s Far Bright Star — Set in 1916, an aging cavalryman leads a team of men to hunt down the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. However, after an ambush in which most of the men are killed, the cavalryman must struggle to survive in the desert. (Joaquin Phoenix)

52. Scott Z. Burns‘ The Torture Report — In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, CIA agents begin using extreme interrogation tactics on those they think were behind it. (Adam Driver, Jon Hamm, Jennifer Morrison, Maura Tierney).

53. William Nicholson‘s Hope Gap — A family deals in the aftermath of the shock revelation that a husband plans to end his 29 year marriage to his wife. (Annette Bening, Bill Nighy, Josh O’Connor, Aiysha Hart)

54. Benh Zeitlin‘s Wendy — Set on a mysterious island where aging and time have come unglued, Zeitlin’s mythological story tells the tale of two children from different worlds fighting to maintain their grip on freedom and joy. (Tommie Lynn Milazzo, Shay Walker)

55. Bart Freundlich‘s After the Wedding — A manager of an orphanage in Kolkata travels to New York to meet a benefactor. (Michelle Williams, Julianne Moore, Billy Crudup, Will Chase)

56. James DeMonaco‘s Once Upon a Time in Staten Island — Allegedly a coming of age family drama set in the summer of 1982 on Staten Island. (Bobby Cannavale, Naomi Watts, Frank Grillo, Isabella Pisacane)

57. Dee Rees‘ The Last Thing He Wanted — A journalist quits her newspaper job and becomes an arms dealer for a covert government agency. (Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Willem Dafoe, Toby Jones)

58. Robert Eggers‘ The Lighthouse — The story of an aging lighthouse keeper named Old who lives in early 20th-century Maine. (Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe)

59. Lone Scherfig‘s The Kindness of Strangers — Six characters cross paths one night in a Russian restaurant in Manhattan and change/save each other’s lives. (Andrea Riseborough, Zoe Kazan, Bill Nighy, Caleb Landry Jones, Jay Baruchel)

60. Chiwetel Ejiofor‘s The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind — A boy in Malawi helps his village by building a wind turbine after reading about them in a library book. (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Aïssa Maïga, Joseph Marcell, Noma Dumezweni)

61.Christoph Waltz‘s Georgetown — Ulrich Mott, an ambitious social climber, marries a wealthy widow in Washington D.C. in order to mix with powerful political players. (Christoph Waltz, Annette Bening, Corey Hawkins, Vanessa Redgrave)

62. Richard Linklater‘s Where’d You Go, Bernadette? — After her anxiety-ridden mother disappears, 15-year-old Bee does everything she can to track her down, discovering her troubled past in the process. (Cate Blanchett, Judy Greer, Kristen Wiig, Laurence Fishburne)

63. Benedict Andrews‘ Against All Enemies — An ambitious young F.B.I. Agent is assigned to investigate iconic actress Jean Seberg when she becomes embroiled in the tumultuous civil rights movement in late 1960s Los Angeles, California. (Kristen Stewart, Zazie Beetz, Vince Vaughn, Jack O’Connell)

64. Armando Iannucci‘s The Personal History of David Copperfield (Tilda Swinton, Ben Whishaw, Gwendoline Christie, Hugh Laurie)

65. Pablo Larraín‘s The True American — A Bangladeshi Air Force officer looking to make his way in the United States is shot by an American terrorist out to kill Muslims in the aftermath of September 11th.

66. Josephine Decker‘s Shirley — A famous Horror writer finds inspiration for her next book after she and her husband take in a young couple. (Elisabeth Moss, Michael Stuhlbarg, Logan Lerman, Odessa Young)

67. Lisa Barros D’Sa & Glenn Leyburn‘s Normal People — Adaptation of the Irish novel by Sally Mooney. Two opposites meet in high school, then again at university and fall in love while struggling with the meaning of their relationship as they share devastating setbacks in their lives. (Liam Neeson, Lesley Manville, Amit Shah, David Wilmot)

68. Wash Westmoreland‘s Earthquake Bird — A young expat living in Tokyo is suspected of murder, which uncovers a mysterious love triangle. (Alicia Vikander, Riley Keough, Jack Huston, Kiki Sukezane)

69. Josh Trank‘s Fonzo — The 47-year old Al Capone, after 10 years in prison, starts suffering from dementia, and comes to be haunted by his violent past. (Tom Hardy, Linda Cardellini, Noel Fisher, Matt Dillon)

70. Sia‘s Music — the story of a sober drug dealer and their disabled sister. (Kate Hudson, Hector Elizondo, Maddie Ziegler)

71. Julie Delpy‘s My Zoe — A divorced mother looks to protect her daughter after an unexpected tragedy. (Richard Armitage, Gemma Arterton, Lindsay Duncan, Daniel Brühl)

72. Paul Verhoeven‘s Benedetta — A 17th-century nun in Italy suffers from disturbing religious and erotic visions. She is assisted by a companion, and the relationship between the two women develops into a romantic love affair. (Virginie Efira, Charlotte Rampling, Lambert Wilson, Olivier Rabourdin)

73. Untitled Miranda July Project — A woman’s life is turned upside down when her criminal parents invite an outsider to join them on a major heist they’re planning. (Evan Rachel Wood, Gina Rodriguez, Debra Winger, Richard Jenkins)

74. Ciro Guerra‘s Waiting for the Barbarians — An honest magistrate in a small outpost of a large empire has a crisis of conscience and tries to lead a resistance when a military commander shows up to torture and murder the natives who pose no threat. The revered author J.M. Coetze won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Literary acolytes a little upset with Depp casting. (Johnny Depp, Robert Pattinson, Mark Rylance, Harry Melling)

75. Trey Edward Shults‘ Waves — Two young couples navigate through the emotional minefield of growing up and falling in love. (Lucas Hedges, Sterling K. Brown, Alexa Demie, Taylor Russell)

76. Yuval Adler‘s The Operative — A woman recruited by the Mossad to work undercover in Tehran. (Diane Kruger, Martin Freeman, Cas Anvar, Werner Daehn)

77. Jennifer Kent‘s The Nightingale — Set in 1825, Clare, a young Irish convict woman, chases a British officer through the rugged Tasmanian wilderness, bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence he committed against her family. (Aisling Franciosi, Sam Claflin, Damon Herriman)

78. Dome Karukoski‘s Tolkien –The formative years of the orphaned author as he finds friendship, love and artistic inspiration among a group of fellow outcasts at school. (Nicholas Hoult, Lily Collins, Pam Ferris, Laura Donnelly)

79. Marjane Satrapi‘s Radioactive — A story of the scientific and romantic passions of Marie and Pierre Curie, and the reverberation of their discoveries throughout the 20th century. (Rosamund Pike, Anya Taylor-Joy, Aneurin Barnard, Sam Riley)

80. James Kent‘s The Aftermath — Post World War II, a British colonel and his wife are assigned to live in Hamburg during the post-war reconstruction, but tensions arise with the German who previously owned the house. (Alexander Skarsgård, Keira Knightley, Jason Clarke, Kate Phillips)

81. Julius Onah‘s Luce — (Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, Tim Roth, Kelvin Harrison, Jr.) Adaptation of the hit play. Watts and Roth play the parents of an adopted African teenager who may harbor aspirations of terrorism.

82. Gideon Raff‘s The Red Sea Diving Resort — The rescue of Ethiopian Jewish immigrants to Israel in 1981. (Michiel Huisman, Haley Bennett, Chris Evans, Greg Kinnear)

83. Todd Robinson‘s The Last Full Measure — 34 years after his death, Airman William H. Pitsenbarger, Jr. (“Pits”) is awarded the nation’s highest military honor, for his actions on the battlefield. (Alison Sudol, Sebastian Stan, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Irvine)

84. Alice Winocour‘s Proxima — An astronaut prepares for a one-year mission aboard an international space station. (Eva Green, Matt Dillon, Lars Eidinger, Aleksey Fateev)

85. Liz Garbus‘s Lost Girls — A mother searching for her missing daughter in Long Island makes a horrifying discovery in the woods where the murdered bodies of four girls have been dumped. (Amy Ryan, Gabriel Byrne, Lola Kirke, Dean Winters)

86. Andy Goddard‘s Six Minutes to Midnight — Influential families in Nazi Germany have sent their daughters to a finishing school in an English sea side town to learn the language and be ambassadors. (Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent, James D’Arcy, Eddie Izzard)

87. Zeresenay Mehari‘s Sweetness in the Belly — Orphaned as a child, Lily experiences her parents homeland of England, escaping civil war. She becomes the heart of a disenfranchised community in London. (Dakota Fanning, Kunal Nayyar, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Wunmi Mosaku)

UNCERTAIN

Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York [in limbo at Amazon, allegedly streaming sometime in ’19)

22. Aaron Sorkin‘s Lucy and Desi — The lives and careers of television pioneers Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Probably not shooting yet — as of mid October 2018 they had not started. Producer friend says they’re still casting Desi. (Cate Blanchett) Possible 2020 release.

Untitled Harriet Tubman Project (HBO) — The life of Civil War-era activist Harriet Tubman, who worked to liberate slaves in the American South by developing an a secretive system that allowed them to escape to freedom. Screenplay by Kirk Ellis. (Viola Davis, Mike Gassaway)